Evans & Tate 'Butterball' Chardonnay 2020 (Australia)

Description

• Toasty oak
• Roasted spices
• Ripe peach
• Creamy & buttery

Mid-straw with a touch of green-gold in the glass. Ripe Chardonnay characters of peach, tinned pears and ripe melon framed with toasty oak, roasted spices and creamy, buttery notes that flood the nose and mouth. A delicious rich and complex Chardonnay. Drinking beautifully now, but will reward careful cellaring for twleve to eighteen months.

The vineyards that grow Chardonnay for this Butterball wine are located on sites in Margaret River that produce rich, ripe fruit flavours and low natural acid levels – all at a lower Baume (and subsequent alcohol level) than other locations. These attributes are critical to achieve the much loved Butterball style.

Following harvest, the grapes are chilled and softly pressed to liberate the juice – the pressings were added back to the free-run juice to achieve the house style. The cloudy juice was then fermented in a combination of new and used French oak barrels and tank using a combination of wild fermentations and a selected yeast used for producing savoury characters that marry well with the Evans & Tate Chardonnay style. Following this fermentation on solids, 90% of the wine then went through malo-lactic fermentation (MLF) followed by maturation on yeast lees - with stirring of the lees done fortnightly to impart texture, balance, integration and complexity to the final wine. The wine was then blended and bottled under screwcap.